Dr. Hamblin Resigns From Interpreter?

[mfbukowski]

It's a matter of trying to serve God and mammon at the same time. I suppose there are many who think a balance can be found between the two. But I'm afraid BYU may be dealing with that tension for some time to come, and it may only get worse as society's values come to contrast more sharply with those ofthe Latter-day Saints.

I think we saw an example of this in the 1980s with athletics. Nationally ranked teams began to emerge more and more at BYU. But as I recall, that was also the period when we saw more frequent scandal involving violation of the Honor Code by athletes who did not take it very seriously. It was as though recruiting of such individuals was the price that had to be paid for having sports teams that were national contenders.

The problem is trying to resolve "Seek ye wisdom from the best books" while condemning "the philosophies of men mingled with scripture".

Let's just say it creates an interesting tension.

[mfbukowski]

It's a matter of trying to serve God and mammon at the same time.

That's exactly it in 14 words.

You must be a writer or something.

[Calm]

It's a matter of trying to serve God and mammon at the same time. I suppose there are many who think a balance can be found between the two.

The scriptures only recommend us to make friends with those who serve mammon, IIRC (just read this yesterday in Church while waiting)....it is not impossible to be friends with those who don't put God first in their lives and be benefited by that friendship and they be benefited by yours, but I don't see how it is possible to be someone who attempts to put both God and mammon at the top of their priorities...too much conflict in purpose. Edited March 4, 2013 by calmoriah

[mfbukowski]

The scriptures only recommend us to make friends with those who serve mammon, IIRC (just read this yesterday in Church while waiting)....it is not impossible to be friends with those who don't put God first in their lives and be benefited by that friendship and they be benefited by yours, but I don't see how it is possible to be someone who attempts to put both God and mammon at the top of their priorities...too much conflict in purpose.

Another way of seeing this is the challenge of being "in" the world but not "of" it.

[Calm]

Another way of seeing this is the challenge of being "in" the world but not "of" it.

Definitely

[LoudmouthMormon]

I wish Interpreter well, and believe it has a very important role to fulfill in LDS intellectual and spiritual life. The Board of Editors and associates have done a truly miraculous job in producing a journal ex nihilo–the third volume will be published this week. I appreciate all their efforts in creating the journal. I have every confidence that they can move ahead to a great future without me. - Dr. Hamblin

As a non-academic who is comfortable with his place in the world as someone who regularly needs to look up big words, and then forgets the definitions within 5 minutes, I must say I've appreciated and benefitted from the apologetic work of you egg-heady types. May your energies and passions never ebb, and your typing fingers stay nimble. May your plans springing from being tired and needing a break, be as numerous and short-lived as all Dr. Peterson's have been (I started counting his in 2009).

Edited March 4, 2013 by LoudmouthMormon

[USU78]

Garden Girl and I both agree!

Moi aussi!

[USU78]

A scriptural phrase comes to mind, something about aspiring to the honors of men.

What a wonderfully descriptive phrase is "mission creep."

And so very apt when applied both to the institution, department, and administrators.

And a ZL I once had on my mission in Austria . . . but that's another tale for another day.

[Tacenda]

As a non-academic who is comfortable with his place in the world as someone who regularly needs to look up big words, and then forgets the definitions within 5 minutes, I must say I've appreciated and benefitted from the apologetic work of you egg-heady types. May your energies and passions never ebb, and your typing fingers stay nimble. May your plans springing from being tired and needing a break, be as numerous and short-lived as all Dr. Peterson's have been (I started counting his in 2009).

I am the same way and do not even come close to the level of the apologetic in his/her ability to do scholarly work in all things Mormon. It seems as though the church hierarchy have benefited greatly from having the defenders work tirelessly to answer to the anti sentiment out there. Thanks be to those that keep the faith, despite knowing facts that are making some run for the hills. The church seems to have let them go by the wayside (don't want to say kicked to the curb), since FAIR and other entities got all the facts sorted out and in the public. Sorry, I just have to give it up for the defenders!! Edited March 4, 2013 by Tacenda

[LoudmouthMormon]

I'm missing the point of your post Tacenda. Are you thinking that someone needs to be in academia to know the facts? Or that scholarly response to criticism is the only viable response? Or that the only LDS apologists are in academia? Or maybe just a snide jab at Dr. Hamblin and the church?

Need more info.

[Tacenda]

I'm missing the point of your post Tacenda. Are you thinking that someone needs to be in academia to know the facts? Or that scholarly response to criticism is the only viable response? Or that the only LDS apologists are in academia? Or maybe just a snide jab at Dr. Hamblin and the church?

Need more info.

I'm thankful you didn't quote me, since I changed my post, but not it's meaning. I'm taking a little jab at the church for not backing our apologetics in some cases. First with Dr. Petersen's release from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. And now Dr. Hamblin's newest retirement from BYU, stemming from, in my opinion, non support or inadequate support of all apologetic work. Edited March 4, 2013 by Tacenda

[wenglund]

Without getting into the BYU dept business, I would just like to express my deep appreciation for Bill's efforts over the years. I have learned a lot from him, particularly in terms of insights into the scriptures and temple symbolism. Hopefully, he won't be entirely curtailed in his extra-curricular religious endevours, but if so, I look forward to when he retires and can labor unimpeded.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 4, 2013 by wenglund

[Calm]

The church seems to have let them go by the wayside (don't want to say kicked to the curb), since FAIR and other entities got all the facts sorted out and in the public.

All the facts have not be sorted out and placed in the public. It would be very difficult to do so in a field where historical information is still being found and being examined and new connections being explored.

And the Church certainly isn't letting anyone go by the wayside even if the Church leadership has pretty much allowed BYU to be an independent entity as the leadership does with the vast majority of its holdings that are outside the formal church setting (of chapel and temple). Making global assumptions based on what is happening in a very limited way is one of the major problems with looking at life in a realistic fashion.

One needs only to look at the tremendous efforts that are being made to get information out to the public, including making it easy access for scholars, including the apologists among them.

Edited March 4, 2013 by calmoriah

[Tacenda]

All the facts have not be sorted and out in the public.

And the Church certainly isn't letting anyone go by the wayside even if the Church leadership has pretty much allowed BYU to be an independent entity as the leadership does with the vast majority of its holdings that are outside the formal church setting (of chapel and temple). Making global assumptions based on what is happening in a very limited way is one of the major problems with looking at life in a realistic fashion.

One needs only to look at the tremendous efforts that are being made to get information out to the public, including making it easy access for scholars, including the apologists among them.

Cal, I'd be out of the church if it weren't for apologetics and people like you. Sorry, if I made it personal here. And if I disrespected the church.

[Calm]

Cal, I'd be out of the church if it weren't for apologetics and people like you. Sorry, if I made it personal here. And if I disrespected the church.

It is best in life if you don't assume everything is lifechanging. When we focus our attention on something, that tends to make it much larger and more important than that which surrounds it, think of a spotlight shining on something in the dark...the rest is made shapeless and meaningless by the brightness of our attention....but that is not the reality, all that is out there in the dark that we aren't seeing just then is just as real and solid as is the stuff we are looking at now. The trick is to remember that no matter how interesting what we are currently looking at is.

And it is not a good thing for apologetics to inflate what it can do and has done as that raises false expectations and that is one thing we certainly don't need more of in our lives.

Edited March 4, 2013 by calmoriah

[Tacenda]

It is best in life if you don't assume everything is lifechanging. When we focus our attention on something, that tends to make it much larger and more important than that which surrounds it, think of a spotlight shining on something in the dark...the rest is made shapeless and meaningless by the brightness of our attention....but that is not the reality, all that is out there in the dark that we aren't seeing just then is just as real and solid as is the stuff we are looking at now. The trick is to remember that no matter how interesting what we are currently looking at is.

And it is not a good thing for apologetics to inflate what it can do and has done as that raises false expectations and that is one thing we certainly don't need more of in our lives.

True, I'm probably displaying them to be heros or giving too much praise, and that would definitely not help. Edited March 4, 2013 by Tacenda

[William Schryver]

I think there is validity in the comment you posted from your email exchange, Will. Just today, sitting in gospel doctrine class, I had a little experience that I won't go into here but tends to bear out what you say.

I was just alerted to the fact that my words have been taken in hand (yet again) by the anti-Schryver mob over at The Great and Spacious Trailer Park©, and are being given the usual treatment of distortion, caricaturization, and general agenda-driven misrepresentation. As the seemingly omnipresent monitors of my every online utterance (as well as very dedicated archivists of my entire online oeuvre) they have proven to be not only relentlessly tenacious, but increasingly virulent myth-makers. In addition, each newly manufactured moral panic revolving around their folk devil du jour is somehow producing a cumulative effect: stoking ever higher the pyre of their malevolence.

Of course, the treatment I am receiving today is similar to what has been dealt out recently to Dan, Bill, Lou, and Greg, whom the mob seeks to discredit and (they hope) ultimately silence by poisoning the well of public discourse with propaganda designed to permanently establish the notion that LDS apologetics is not only less than scholarly in some way, but that it also constitutes a form of "hate speech" that ought to be suppressed to the extent possible, for the public good.

Oddly enough, however, the mob is motivated to serve me in the same manner they do my august group of professor friends notwithstanding I have no letters after my name and have done little more, to date, than threaten to publish academic articles detailing my research and findings. I suspect this has given many observers pause to wonder -- what exactly does the mob fear so much in what they think I might say that they have worked so tirelessly to suppress it and to otherwise discredit me in advance of any putative publication they fail to prevent?

Speaking of a very similar episode from a couple weeks back, I sent the following to one of my brothers in arms:

I believe it is really quite fascinating, in many ways. All of these disparate people, from different backgrounds and different places on the earth, coming together over the course of a few hours, to spontaneously construct what amounts to a rather sophisticated, multi-layered excoriation, replete with several instances of textbook rhetorical devices, whose sole purpose is to propagate and continually confirm a mythical narrative around a person for whom they share a common hatred.

And these people don't just manufacture lies and send them on down the road with a tank of gas. Oh, no! These people service their products almost daily, even providing them with additional innovations from the factory as they become available. All gratis.

It is all worthy of a serious sociological study, if you ask me.

... back when I was breaking the ground for these multi-month public flogging sessions, I sent you the link to a YouTube video of the U2 song

... the last verse of which contains an interesting phrase which I used to cite in my signature line:

Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you

Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you

They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends

Gonna last with you longer than your friends

,

Whether that proves true, or not, remains to be seen. But I am confident that this will not be the last entry in their ongoing propaganda campaign.

btw: If you'd like, send me a PM with an account of your experience in church yesterday.

[William Schryver]

What a wonderfully descriptive phrase is "mission creep."

And so very apt when applied both to the institution, department, and administrators.

And a ZL I once had on my mission in Austria . . . but that's another tale for another day.

Where have you been, old friend? Good to see you here in the trenches.

Well, maybe not exactly that. Perhaps more accurately: being that I am here in this trench, for better or worse, and notwithstanding the fact that I should really avoid this trench at all costs, it is good to see you.

[USU78]

Where have you been, old friend? Good to see you here in the trenches.

Well, maybe not exactly that. Perhaps more accurately: being that I am here in this trench, for better or worse, and notwithstanding the fact that I should really avoid this trench at all costs, it is good to see you.

And you, ol' buddy ol' pal. It's been a while, but life has been tugging at me a WHOLE LOT over the last 2-2-1/2 years. It's good to see that you've lost none of your allure for the "otherwise abled" in the Trailerpark©.

[USU78]

Been thinking: Is there a feeling that the Dept is touchy about the concept of the "Professional Apologist?" The argument in the Trailer Park© and such places being that certain folks, having day jobs where they receive their pay from and owe their professional efforts to the LDS Church, are secretly being employed by the Church in order to pursue their true Church calling, apologetics, while under cover.

A childish notion, to be sure, but it wouldn't be the first time somebody overreacted to a childish criticism by going far overboard to avoid an appearance of "evil."

[William Schryver]

Been thinking: Is there a feeling that the Dept is touchy about the concept of the "Professional Apologist?" The argument in the Trailer Park© and such places being that certain folks, having day jobs where they receive their pay from and owe their professional efforts to the LDS Church, are secretly being employed by the Church in order to pursue their true Church calling, apologetics, while under cover.

A childish notion, to be sure, but it wouldn't be the first time somebody overreacted to a childish criticism by going far overboard to avoid an appearance of "evil."

In me, you're talking to a guy who seriously believes college football players deserve a significant chunk of the change that is produced by the college football economic juggernaut. So I might not give the answer that you want to hear. But I might also note that (consistent with my essential argument that everyone is an apologist) those who write criticism of the Church are quite often paid to do so, and I suspect, in most cases, substantially more than was ever garnered by those poor fools who invest the time and effort necessary to provide intelligent defenses of the Church. One man's writing can be as valuable as another's engineering, or salesmanship, or administrative skills -- perhaps, in a great many instances, more valuable. I would have had no problem if the FARMS Review had paid $1000 for each article chosen for publication. Probably would have resulted in more and even better submissions.

Edited March 5, 2013 by William Schryver

[jwhitlock]

I was just alerted to the fact that my words have been taken in hand (yet again) by the anti-Schryver mob over at The Great and Spacious Trailer Park©, and are being given the usual treatment of distortion, caricaturization, and general agenda-driven misrepresentation. As the seemingly omnipresent monitors of my every online utterance (as well as very dedicated archivists of my entire online oeuvre) they have proven to be not only relentlessly tenacious, but increasingly virulent myth-makers. In addition, each newly manufactured moral panic revolving around their folk devil du jour is somehow producing a cumulative effect: stoking ever higher the pyre of their malevolence.

Will, if you'd only be willing to validate their feelings, then all would be well and the world would be a far better place. Shame!

[wenglund]

I was just alerted to the fact that my words have been taken in hand (yet again) by the anti-Schryver mob over at The Great and Spacious Trailer Park©, and are being given the usual treatment of distortion, caricaturization, and general agenda-driven misrepresentation.

Oh...good...another addition to the Bridget's collection edition, where rhetorical manipulations directed toward character assassinations shamelessly reach the zenith of unwitting hypocrisy.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 5, 2013 by wenglund

[rameumptom]

I understand the desire of BYU to be more admired by the scholarly world. I also understand Dr Hamblin has limited time to give to both Interpreter and scholarly studies outside of Interpreter.

That said, my tithing pays a big chunk of BYU's existence. I would like to see them provide a benefit to the members throughout the world, who pay for its existence, yet have not attended there. I felt that FARMS was a good offering by the university to the members of the Church.

Now, I worry that many BYU scholars involved in Interpreter or FAIR or other similar projects will also be told to quit these projects and put their energy elsewhere, without giving us members any recourse or opportunity to receive such benefit. If such is the case, then why should members subsidize BYU, when it is supposed to be a benefit for the Church and its members?

I think we can have a balance here. I just hope BYU does not end up being another secular university.

[ERayR]

I understand the desire of BYU to be more admired by the scholarly world. I also understand Dr Hamblin has limited time to give to both Interpreter and scholarly studies outside of Interpreter.

That said, my tithing pays a big chunk of BYU's existence. I would like to see them provide a benefit to the members throughout the world, who pay for its existence, yet have not attended there. I felt that FARMS was a good offering by the university to the members of the Church.

Now, I worry that many BYU scholars involved in Interpreter or FAIR or other similar projects will also be told to quit these projects and put their energy elsewhere, without giving us members any recourse or opportunity to receive such benefit. If such is the case, then why should members subsidize BYU, when it is supposed to be a benefit for the Church and its members?

I think we can have a balance here. I just hope BYU does not end up being another secular university.

My thoughts exactly.